Catkins

I was out in the yard today, and out in the park, looking for green things and sinking my boots into snow-melt mud. At the very edge of our lawn there's a contorted pussy-willow with catkins just starting to pop out, and I stood for a minute and thought about snapping off a branch of that fuzzy February sigh of relief to put in a vase like I have for last few years, in Galesburg. For whatever reason, it does not seem so urgent here.

Insulation

I shivered in Galesburg for a week, and I shivered so much that on the my last day, Wednesday, I stepped out of a leaky shower and got to dripping and shaking so hard that I convinced myself that I was frozen in place. I suppose I feel that way about a lot of things, like making phone calls and sending emails, and a January vacation to Western Illinois had little in the way of coaxing to do in order for those tendencies to surface. After seven days of poor insulation, I was certain I had to stay.

I did. I made some kind of scene to my mother over the phone, and I stayed in bed and cried, and I shook and I shivered and it was all too dramatic for my liking, really. Then again, it was just about dramatic enough. The Farmer's Almanac had only two words to describe the dates of my visit: "bitter cold". I stayed a day more and tried to thaw a little.

In the Mid-Atlantic, there are heaps of snow outside. The air is dry and quiet, which winter ought to be. Indoors, though, the heat is trapped behind thick glass and humidifiers whir upstairs and down, and there are overflowing bowls of citrus and kiwi on the kitchen counter. I took a long bath, and then wrapped myself up in a thin cotton robe and walked around the house collecting my plants, returning them from their vacation sills to the Little Room's window. My miniature rose is in full bloom now, and with any luck it'll last here until spring.

Ode

Things are strictly concrete, steel, and glass at present. It makes me feel like writing an ode to bricks again, which I'll never do, and I'll always want to do, because "An Ode to Bricks" is a hypothetical poem that tells you everything I've ever felt about home, and not-home, and distance and resolution, and dissonance again. It can never ever exist, of course, because I just don't write things like that. Still, bricks are important. Sometime, somebody ought to write them an ode.

Photographs taken in Frederick, MD

K.I.T.

"People there are like birds that come down in flocks, hop about chattering, gobble up their seed, then fly away, forgetting what they have swallowed. I love not to scatter grain for such as these. With you, friend, it is different."

-from Story of a Piebald Horse, By W. H. Hudson

In May, which seems just so very long ago, my dear friend L. took a train to Galesburg, missed her stop, and took one back from Princeton, having realized her mistake. Some hours later, she stood before a small, delighted assembly of old friends. The reunion took place over sweet potato fries, and we discussed plans for her weekend visit as The Oak Room slowly emptied of other students. After sopping up sherbet spilled by one of L.'s overzealous devotees, and publicly displaying our affections, this little band of the newly reunited went about their debauchery and adventuring and gossiping.

I am not really here to recount the story of L.'s visit to you in any great detail.  If you are curious, it was a lovely time. We started our weekends early. We stayed up late smoking cigarettes on porches, poking fun and catching up. We did all of the sorts of things that make for a splendid time in person but rather dull reading. I bring up the reunion, not because I think fondly of it (although of course I do), but because it was so surreal and bittersweet.

L. left Galesburg just about a year ago, because of a sort of change in educational plans. I think this sort of thing happens all the time. At any rate, L. is in Galesburg no longer, and there are few circumstances in the foreseeable future that might bring me to her whereabouts. "Give up." said Geography, "Proximity rules". "I'm coming to visit in May!" L. replied.

The reunion temporarily defeated separation. It was a swell time. The gang was all there. The strangeness and the sadness that just barely crept in, though, came from knowing that L. would leave, and that she was not scheduled to board any more trains and miss any more stops for Galesburg. There was the great hope that she would come back, but no assurance. What now? 
 

Drifting apart seems most obvious, and in some ways, inevitable. Proximity has its benefits. However, L. has reminded me that we can choose our friends no matter how unfortunate our geography, and what a timely reminder! Stuck here in Maryland for the summer once again, friendless and generally miserable, Geography would have me believe that she has crushed every human relationship I treasure. Instead, I write letters, have started a blog, and lo! Those friends that are dear remain so, simply because we correspond occasionally, and most importantly, because we like one another.